The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 1, 1907–1922

With the publication of this authorized collection, readers will have access to the complete letters of Ernest Hemingway for the first time. This first volume documents in rich and lively detail the formative years of a gifted artist with an outsized personality who would both reflect and transform his times.

With the first publication, in this edition, of all the surviving letters of Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), readers will for the first time be able to follow the thoughts, ideas and actions of one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century in his own words. This first volume encompasses his youth, his experience in World War I and his arrival in Paris. The letters reveal a more complex person than Hemingway''s tough guy public persona would suggest: devoted son, affectionate brother, infatuated lover, adoring husband, spirited friend and disciplined writer. Unguarded and never intended for publication, the letters record experiences that inspired his art, afford insight into his creative process and express his candid assessments of his own work and that of his contemporaries. The letters present immediate accounts of events and relationships that profoundly shaped his life and work. A detailed introduction, notes, chronology, illustrations and index are included.